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Learn more about how we discovered a blueprint for America's return to reality has emerged from Tucson, Arizona.
A blueprint for America's return to reality has emerged from Tucson, Arizona.
Before the rest of the world began to ask how we might emerge from this COVID-19 crisis, the University of Arizona began its work to achieve an answer. We anticipated the need to adapt, and we began our work with resolve to protect our students and staff while continuing our mission of service to Arizona.
Our faculty moved every class online within a week, and our researchers moved mountains to better understand the virus and the correlation between infection, disease and immunity, in order to shed some light on a path forward.
Helping Arizona's Response
At the very outset of the outbreak, UArizona deployed our decades of experience in the study of coronaviruses and our biomedical and technology assets and facilities towards creation of FDA-approved biospecimen collection kits — the materials used to test people for the novel coronavirus — to help offset shortages.
In a single weekend, researchers at the university's BIO5 Institute rushed to help make these critical supplies to expand Arizona's testing capacity. They manufactured five liters of the FDA-approved medium and secured the necessary swabs to assemble sorely needed specimen collection kits to safely obtain, store and transport patient samples.
Following this effort, our Health Sciences Biorepository has now secured the additional materials and reagents necessary to produce tens of thousands of COVID-19 specimen collection kits. UArizona has made these available to several communities in Arizona.
The Next Step: Antibody Tests for Everyone at UArizona
Yet, incredibly, data indicate that as many as half of those who have been exposed to COVID-19 and infected by the virus experience few to no signs of the disease. Moreover, recent data show that a higher than predicted proportion of the population has been infected.
Taken together, these data strongly suggest that testing the sick and the symptomatic is only part of the information needed to safely reestablish our learning and working environments. This is why our experts also labored to create a test to detect the presence of antibodies.
Given that humans have no known immunity to this virus, the presence of antibodies serves as an indication that the individual has been infected by, and has mounted an immune response to the virus, even in the absence of symptoms. Thus, these antibody tests may allow us to detect individuals who may have been unknowingly infected and recovered, providing further information and allowing for more targeted viral RNA testing.
Though there have been some reports of re-infection shortly after COVID-19, most experts consider it more likely that the virus remained present all along before becoming detectable again. Antibodies for other highly virulent coronaviruses like SARS and MERS have been shown to confer immunity for up to three years following infection.
While there are no guarantees, it seems likely that COVID-19 will follow suit, and a positive antibody test will be an essential step to significantly reduce concerns about someone's ability to contract or spread the virus on our campus.
Experiments from our own researchers and others show excellent correlation between the presence of antibodies and their ability to neutralize the virus. Accordingly, all 60,000 UArizona students, faculty, and staff will be able to receive the test free of charge.
Going Beyond Campus
The utility of our testing strategy, however, goes far beyond the goal of helping the University of Arizona reopen its classrooms. We also believe this test can help the people of Arizona begin to recover from the steps we have taken to protect ourselves from this virus, and from the impact of these measures.
The university, therefore, recently made a commitment to scale up its serological testing capabilities, expanding from our campus to our broader community. In the largest undertaking of its kind in the United States to date, the university will work with the state of Arizona to provide antibody testing to 250,000 health-care workers and first responders
Once the program ramps up to full capacity, we expect to be able to process thousands of tests per day to protect our health care professionals, with aspirations to expand the initiative to other state universities and communities around the country.
As has been noted, we must remain mindful that antibody testing is not a panacea – and rebounding from this crisis will not be akin to flipping on a light switch. Rather, the reopening of society will more likely involve a gradual brightening. We expect the serological testing strategy to provide the fuel that accelerates this process.
Retroactively identifying those who have contracted COVID-19 is a quick, cost-efficient means of helping Arizona students and citizens alike assess their level of risk, and a means for public health officials and other experts to calculate the reach of the pandemic as we develop vaccines to guard against the virus for the longer term.
While Arizona has taken the steps needed to avoid the brunt of COVID-19's harsh impacts, its flagship university, together with its clinical partners, has been busy combatting this deadly disease.
Our university has long built telescopes and cameras to capture the light of the most distant galaxies, and that drive to explore and contribute makes us absolutely clear that we must be a source of illumination to guide us out of this dark period.
We encourage our counterparts across the higher education system to join us in adopting this template for their respective communities; in this extraordinary testing effort that we know will expedite our return to brighter days ahead.
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